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Akshay Kumar was to fetch up at 2.30pm. His Honda CRV was at the gate of the hotel two minutes earlier so that he himself could stride into the venue on the dot of 2.30.
Apart from simply interviewing him (which also gives you a pretty good idea of what he is all about as a person), working backstage with a celebrity brings you closer to discovering the qualities that have taken him to where he is today. Shah Rukh Khan has his own charm that he brings to the table when he enters a function but punctuality is certainly not one of them. In fact, he relishes making guests stew for a couple of hours before he breezes in with his salaams.
Akshay’s ammo is different. One is his reliability once he accepts an invitation. The second is that he looks just so damn good. In fact, he’s looking his best today, the years sitting lightly on him. (He himself credits his “no smoking, no alcohol” lifestyle for his robust good looks.) One thing all the current crop of celebrities, especially the men, share is that they are all nattily dressed for every occasion, never overdoing it with colours. Gone are the days of Shatrughan Sinha (with his vibrant purples and magentas) or flamboyant Govinda (whose wardrobe would often make you cringe).
An Akshay, Shah Rukh or Salman will most times walk in tieless, wearing a sober shirt with a very dark coat. When he walked into a seminar organised by the Indian Merchants’ Chamber, to accept an award for Excellence In Entertainment, Akshay stuck to that pattern in a white shirt, black coat, no tie. Unlike the Dharmendra-Jeetendra generation of actors who would be tongue-tied on stage, stars today are very audience-savvy. Perhaps because of their many stage shows and promotional tours, they are comfortable speaking even impromptu. Shah Rukh Khan can deliver a lecture at an Ivy League college, be it Yale or Harvard, and be completely at home out there.
Akshay is an exception — giving a speech is not his forte. But he too is at ease on stage. That afternoon, a gentleman sitting on my right on the dais watched the actor’s hi-octane act in a short A-V and whispered to me, “I wonder where Akshay gets his energy from.” I repeated it to Akshay who was on my left and he promptly grinned, “Tell him that if he saw the amounts on my cheques, he’d get energy too!”
All through the A-V, Akshay had his head down. “I’m always embarrassed to see myself on screen,” he whispered. When it was announced that after the A-V, the award would be presented to him, I said, “And then we want to hear Akshay speak.” Akshay told me quietly, “Caught me on my weakest point, huh?”
But he soon proved that he had mastered how to communicate with his audience. Akshay took a route that suited him best: he didn’t talk about himself or his movies; instead, he rooted for sports. He exhorted the “big businessmen out here” to encourage sporting activities. He talked of how he himself was looking after three families completely (mainly financially), so that their immensely gifted children could concentrate on building a career in sports. “By sports I don’t mean cricket,” he underlined.
He was short and smart, building on his strength that the audience will be with him if he has something new to say, and covering up his weakness of not being an electrifyingly articulate speaker. The SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis comes both naturally and with experience to him, and that is another trait that has turned an unknown Rajiv Bhatia into the Akshay Kumar of today.
At the same event, the very dapper Kabir Bedi, who hosted the seminar, showed just why he goes beyond mere good looks. For someone who’s pushing 70, he stands ramrod straight, and he has lost enough kilos (by simply avoiding carbs) to cut a perfect figure. Once Kabir accepts an assignment, he is straightforward with his fee, and is accommodating to the point where he handles megalomaniacs and boors with grace. Believe me, a seminar of this magnitude had a fair share of both varieties of men.
Kabir is also meticulous with his homework. He researches and collects facts and figures before hosting an event. Two evenings before the seminar, he spent hours deliberating with the committee members at his new Juhu apartment, going over each segment carefully and offering suggestions to pep up the proceedings. It was a delight to work alongside such a considerate and complete professional.
Truly, self-made celebrities are not flukes.
